Our robotised system SmartPick has been successfully employed in additives extrusion processing for plastic materials production.
I The robot, equipped with the gripping device SmartGrip, picks the bags coming from three different pallets, it cuts and empties them into three separated hoppers, that feed 4 gravimetric loss-in-weight feeders. SP-AT control software, according to reload signals coming from the feeders, defines the priority to be followed in feeding the different components and optimises start-up times and extrusion system emptying.
An acoustic alarm advises the operator in charge of raw materials pallet resupply. This last operation does not last more than two minutes, the necessary time to extract the empty pallet and insert the new one. Anyway, the system is arranged to feed the pallets in automatic, by installing appropriate roller conveyors, where it’s possible to store enough quantity of raw material to cover daily need.
If required, the empty pallets can be also picked by the robot and be stacked up in a dedicated area or stockpiled by an automatic stacker.
If a new bag type is used, the system can be set on automatic pre-calculation function. It’s enough to select the palletising scheme from graphic context menu and digit bag dimensions; everything else is our software business!
SmartPick software has been recently rewritten in order to include all the functions implemented during systems tests in this last year.
SmartPick AdvancedTouch - Thanks to Advance Touch function, the programming of new schemes can be realised by visual interface, by touching the bags picture taken by a videocamera, everything is very fast and intuitive to use.
SmartPick CalculateIt! - Calculatelt! function allows you to program a new scheme in few seconds, simply selecting bags placing from a graphic context menu and specifying bag dimensions.
SmartPick SmartEye- Thanks to performances now achievable by modern systems of computer vision, it’s possible to arrange new palletising schemes by real-time systems. It’s enough to supply the sample picture to the system in order to activate bags identification.
SmartPickGT - It’s the last frontier of interactivity in robotics field. In addition to usual error messages, photos of the system components and images coming from the videocameras are displayed to support the operator in troubleshooting activities.
